Report: Lakers Unlikely To Agree To Sign And Trade Dwight Howard

Any team looking to get into the Dwight Howard sweepstakes will have to sign him on their own, because the Lakers will be unlikely to agree to a sign and trade of their All Star big man.

ESPN.com is reporting that the Lakers, who are aware that they could lose Howard to the Rockets, would rather save Howard’s cap space for 2014, the Summer of Lebron, than agree to a sign and trade with another team for Howard.

Yet the Lakers also, according to sources, have not completely ruled out the idea of a sign-and-trade if they come to find next month that Howard is determined to leave. Sources say they are indeed leaning against sign-and-trade scenarios because they’d rather bank the resultant cap space from Howard’s departure for the summer of 2014. But sources say they’ve adopted a keep-all-options-open approach. So they’ll at least listen to just about anything.

Rather than agree to sign and trade Dwight Howard to a team such as the Clippers, I’d rather see the Lakers save Howard’s cap space, and put to use in 2014 when LeBron, any member of the big three, Carmelo, and several other big named free agents might opt out of their deals, and seek a change.